New Idea Manure Spreaders

Foraging for safer practices

There are no root vegetables in these six plots of land behind the Atlantic Cool Climate Crop Research Centre, only tall green vegetation, but all will soon be harvested to feed cattle.

While still in the growing stages, the forage crops are getting essential nutrients from the very animals they will soon feed. Manure collected from a nearby dairy farm is being used as a natural fertilizer.

Gary Bishop, an agricultural systems engineer with Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, is overseeing a research project at the centre, part of a bigger project involving the Atlantic provinces.

When completed, it will give farmers more precise information on how to fertilize with manure, while protecting the quality of water in streams, rivers and underground water tables from bacterial contamination.

“Basically, the idea behind the project is to gain a better understanding of how farmers use dairy manure, particularly as a fertilizer and how we can minimize impacts with the environment,” Bishop said.

There are five researchers involved in the Atlantic region, with four managing the sites in each province and one person co-ordinating identification of bacteria detected in water from the fields.

“We have similar water quality monitoring sites in each province,” Bishop said, “so we can do similar projects with similar treatments and compare results across the Atlantic region, comparing climate, different soil types, different crops.”

The four groups decided last year the crops they wanted to grow, then began seeding the plots.

Bishop said this is the first year they’ve actually been able to get full-grown crops.

In the six plots of land, two different manure application methods were used.

A traditional broadcast method with a manure spreader was used on three plots and a new type of application with a surface banding applicator was used on the other three.

“It basically just applies the manure in narrow bands underneath the canopy of the crop,” Bishop said, “so it keeps it off of the crop foliage, right down on the ground out of the wind.”

That’s supposed to be helpful in retaining nutrients.

The plots have perforated drainage tubing to collect excess soil water.

“Soils in Newfoundland tend to be shallow before we come to an impermeable layer, so the incidence of rainfall we have normally would tend to keep the soil wet,” Bishop said. “We put a drain tube in there to give that water a way out of the field.

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